By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by Jim Frise, August 23, 1947.
“Meet,” cried Jimmie Frise, “High-rigger’s Axman!”
The most beautiful dog I ever saw stood before us in the farmyard.
He was noble. He was a creamy golden color, and was about the size of a good hound, but heavier-built, with a deep chest and powerful legs. His coat was dense and slightly wavy, and of an indescribable tawny hue. He was a Golden Retriever.
“Jim,” I said, “I never saw a nobler expression in a dog’s face.”
“Next to a cocker spaniel,” informed Jim, “the golden retriever, of all dogs, tries hardest to be a human being.”
“Hi, Axman!” I greeted, bending.
And the beautiful creature lowered his head and with heavily wagging tail stepped a couple of paces forward so I could fondle his skull.
Mrs. McGinniss, the farmer, came to her kitchen door and viewed us.
“Did you ever see a more beautiful animal?” she demanded. “You’ll have fun with him the next three days.”
“I can’t see anything we can do for him,” I replied. “He looks to be in the very peak of condition.”
“Just his runs over the fields,” said Mrs. McGinniss.
Our friend, Horace Parkhouse, who owns High-rigger’s Axman, had to go to Minneapolis on urgent business there on the very eve of the Canadian National Exhibition dog show. All summer, he has been grooming and exercising and conditioning Axman for the big show -the first after all the years of war.
And at the psychological moment, the very last week before the Ex opens, he had, in the interests of finance, to run away off to Minneapolis.
So he had asked Jimmie and me to go out to Mrs. McGinniss’s farm, where Axman is boarded, for the three days he had to be away, and give the beautiful dog our personal and loving care.
Runs over the fields. Brushings night and morning. Daily routines of making Axman stand steady and cool, while we pretended we were showing him in the ring before the multitudes of the dog show.
“The fact that we’re strangers to him,” explained Jimmie, kneeling down beside Axman and setting his feet just so, to reveal his fine build, “is all the better. Because it will accustom him to all the strangers he’s going to meet next week…”
Axman, who had already been thoroughly schooled since puppyhood to take up this show-ring stance when requested, stood before us in all his beauty: head up, ears alert, front legs set straight, and hind-legs stretched I well back to show the fine slope of his back.
“He’s a winner!” declared Jim.
“Come to lunch!” called Mrs. McGinniss from the kitchen door.
With alacrity, Jimmie and I wheeled and made for the kitchen door, for, in the little while we had been in the McGinniss door-yard, the most ravishing odors had been wafting out to us.
“We eat,” explained Mrs. McGinniss, “right here in in the kitchen, the old-fashioned way….”
It was old-fashioned, all right. I have never seen a farm table more abundantly burdened than the one standing before us.
In the city, there is an affected fashion of putting one course at a time on the table. But in the country, the whole business is set on the table so that a man has a fair idea of what is ahead of him. A man can pause, reverently, for a minute, before seating himself at a farm table, and take a quick survey of the whole situation. And plot his course.
In front of Mrs. McGinnis, was a large tureen of vegetable soup. To one side, a platter heaped with golden scrambled eggs, with a sort of ruching or frill of bacon all round.
On the other side, a bowl of what are properly called home-fried potatoes. These are not the battered and mushy things that go by the name of home-fried potatoes in cities. Mrs. McGinniss had sliced good large potatoes in whole, sound slices of a reasonable thickness. And they were fried dark brown on one side only. There is the secret: one side of each good wholesome slice a crisp dark brown: the other side creamy from the butter in which it was fried.
Now, there was also cole slaw and a side dish of stewed corn by each plate. And sundry scattered saucers of large snappy radishes and old-fashioned tangy leaf lettuce. But what caught and held the eye of the speculator on beholding Mrs. McGinniss’s table was a sort of fortress, or turreted and battlemented tower, in the midst of the table, consisting of pies, warm in their original pie plates; low dishes of preserved peaches in the foreground, tall dishes of preserved cherries of extraordinary rich color in the background. And, as a sort of core or heart of the architectural design, a chocolate cake about fourteen inches in diameter and four inches in thickness, from which the deep, rich coiling dark icing seemed ready to drip; but just didn’t.
“Aaaaahhhh!” said Jimmie, for want of something better to say as he sidled into his chair.
High-rigger’s Axman, who had come in the door with us, sat down midway between Jim and me and thumped the floor heartily with his tail. I looked at him pityingly, for his mouth was open, and his noble eyes were filled with a dreamy look, and he appeared to be smiling….
“None of this for you, boy!” I consoled. “You’re in training…”
And Mrs. McGinniss handed me the soup.
For my sake, as well as the reader’s, I must not dwell on that meal. Mrs. McGinniss coached us hurriedly through the soup, scrambled eggs, bacon, home-fried potatoes and so forth.
“Save some space,” she cautioned, “I want you to taste these pies…”
Taste! In city restaurants, they have discovered a way of cutting a pie into seven. Anybody with a little practise, can cut a pie into six. But Mrs. McGinniss was poor at mathematics. She just cut her pies into four.
First on the program was green apple pie.
“It’s not so filling,” explained Mrs. McGinniss. “I want you to compare it with the combined cherry and gooseberry…”
From out that central fortress or tower in the centre of the table, she drew forth, after the combined cherry-gooseberry pie had been voted the equal of the green apple, a pumpkin pie.
“Preserved pumpkin,” apologized Mrs. McGinniss. “But my own recipe…”
We each had a quarter. Then after a large wedge of chocolate cake, to top off, Mrs. McGinniss prevailed upon us to sample a little plum conserve she was very proud of, buttered on a small tea biscuit; and to test its tang as compared with some rhubarb marmalade she was equally partial to, a little dab of it on another tea biscuit…
Poor old High-rigger’s Axman had, long before the scrambled eggs were gone, given up all hope and had laid down, his beautiful head across his forepaws. About the time I sighed down the last morsel of tea biscuit with rhubarb marmalade, he raised his eyes reproachfully from under his noble brow, smacked and readjusted his lips comfortably, and closed his eyes as though in pain.
“Jim,” I asked, shoving the table away, “how about the dog…?”
“We’ll take him for a run…” agreed Jim.
Outside the kitchen door, under the porch roof, was a weatherbeaten old sofa. I got to it first, and sat on it.
“Now, now,” protested Jim, “don’t let’s forget Horace…
And I thought, guiltily, of poor old Horace Parkhouse away off there in Minneapolis, trying to attend to finance while his heart was back here with Axman and the big Canadian National Exhibition show in which he had high hopes for Axman.
“Jim,” I suggested, “you take Axman this afternoon and I’ll take him after supper…. eh?”
But Jim declined on the ground that we were equally uncomfortable from food, and equally responsible, in our promises to Horace, for Axman getting his exercise under our watchful eyes over the fields.
So I heaved myself off the sofa and, after bidding Mrs. McGinniss adieu for an hour, we headed down the lane past the barn and out over the pasture.
Axman was beautiful to behold in action. He ranged eagerly along the fences, into every covert and through each weed patch, with the tireless air of the hunting dog.
“He’ll win something,” I huffed, as we climbed the slope. “Maybe best in show, eh?”
He’s got tough competition, don’t forget,” said Jim, breathless. “This is the first Canadian National Exhibition in six long years. The dog breeders have been busy all through the war, despite everything. They’ve had a breathing space to weed out and choose only the best of their fancy. This will probably be the greatest dog show in the history of the CNE.”
“Wouldn’t it be something,” I gloated, “if Horace were to take best in show with Axman?”
“And we,” added Jim, “could feel some share of the glory, even if only three days of this…”
“It’s the last few days,” I pointed out, “that puts the final show finish on a dog.”
At which moment we came to a grassy knoll, with sumach bushes, where, as if by common assent, we both sat down for a moment.
“We can watch him from here,” sighed Jim.
And while Axman explored and exercised far and wide, Jimmie and I talked about the dog show, and the CNE which had been suspended for six years after its long and famous history, so that the troops could use its great buildings and park for training. And I lay back to rest my torso…
The sun was setting when I waked. And there was Jim sprawled out beside me.
And Axman nowhere to be seen!
“Hey, Jim!”
We found Axman comfortably asleep on the sofa under the porch roof by the kitchen door. And Mrs. McGinniss in the throes of preparing supper.
Supper? Well: there were pies again; new ones. And tea biscuits and various assorted jams, jellies, conserves; and a new cake, this time a maple walnut cake, with icing the color of Axman’s golden coat.
Mrs. McGinniss egged us on and watched our every bite.
“Now, how does that cake compare,” she demanded, “with the chocolate cake we had for lunch?”
And we confessed that maybe it had a slight edge. “That raspberry jelly; now?” she queried, thrusting the jar under our noses. “Take a bit of that cottage cheese and a dab of the raspberry jelly…”
So that it was full dark by the time we withdrew from the kitchen table. And too late to take Axman for any romp in the night, when he might get lost or tangled in a wire fence.
“We’ll take him,” yawned Jim, as we prepared for bed up in Mrs. McGinniss’s spare room under the sloping gables, “for a good sharp run before breakfast. Let’s get up at six.”
And as we pulled the covers over, we could hear busy sounds from below, in the kitchen.
“Do you know,” said Jim sleepily but with wonder, “I believe that woman is at the oven again!”
Well, it was a quarter to eight before we waked. And when we got down to breakfast, Mrs. McGinniss had a johnny cake and maple syrup, tea biscuits and still another serried array of jars of new and fresh jellies and conserves, preserves and marmalades.
And though she had finished her breakfast long ago, she sat with us at the table, and watched our every bite, and questioned us close and narrow on the merits of the preserved melon over the acid tang of the thimbleberry jelly; or the aroma of the spiced peach jam over the grape conserve.
So that after breakfast, we took Axman down the road a few hundred yards, until our fears of him being hit by a passing motor car – although there were none – caused us to take him back to the farm. By which time, lunch was in preparation.
We arrived here at Mrs. McGinniss’s on Thursday, before noon. It is now Saturday afternoon. And Horace Parkhouse arrives back here tonight from Minneapolis.
We have combed and brushed Axman both night and morning. We have, to the best of our ability, given him several runs over the meadows and pastures. But Axman has decidedly put on weight since Thursday. You can see it. It is obvious.
We also had a very unfortunate experience.
We caught Mrs. McGinniss giving Axman a large hunk of chocolate cake.
And when I inspected his feeding pan, I discovered traces of what could not be anything else but the loganberry pie which we had had for lunch a little time before.
“Mrs. McGinniss,” I accused hollowly, “do you mean to say you have been feeding Axman pastry… and… and… CAKE!”
Aw, I can’t see it go to waste…” protested the dear old lady.
“But… but Mrs. McGinniss!” cried Jimmie, “You seem to have gone crazy over cooking! Surely you don’t cook like this all the time…”
“No indeed,” said Mrs. McGinniss. “But it’s six years now since I showed any pies, cakes, jellies and preserves in the Exhibition. And I have been just testing out my recipes so as to pick the sure fire winners…”
“Testing them on us!” I ejaculated. “And on Axman…!”
“You’ll all thrive,” scoffed Mrs. McGinniss joyously.
Horace will be here in a few minutes. He telephoned from the village. But before he gets here, may I suggest that if you go to the Canadian National Exhibition dog show and see a particularly well-fed Golden Retriever with a dreamy expression in his eyes, that will be Axman.
And DO go and see the women’s home cooking exhibits. Look for Mrs. McGinniss’s entries.
They will explain all.
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